Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#171

Post by derefr » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:27 AM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #165

ineedasername wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what bar you're using for "mainstream", but if it doesn't include videogames in the late 80's/early 90's, it's too high. If being more popular than any other single toy short of a ball isn't mainstream, nothing is. Sure, they're even more popular now, and they may be more popular still in some areas of the world, but that doesn't make them not mainstream 25 years ago. as reference, according to wiktionar…

To add to this: Skyrim sold 30 million copies. That's more than all but 7 music albums ever made. Wii Sports (12 years old) sold 80 million copies. That's more than any album ever. Individual videogames regularly sell more than MUSIC and have done so for well over a decade. I don't know what definition of mainstream there is where something sells 80 million copies and still isn't mainstream.

Wii Sports was one of the first mainstream games. That's pretty much the boundary of the two eras. Everyone at the time was talking about how the Wii was penetrating all these "mainstream" markets that gaming had never managed to touch before, remember?

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#172

Post by egfx » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #125

ineedasername wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's entered the mainstream less than 10 years ago. It surpassed the film industry not 2 years" I don't know how you could think this unless you mean something like esports gaming. Gaming has been mainstream for quite some time, as early as the late 80's I'd say, complete with tv show, toy, and movie tie ins. PC gaming was a little less prevalent, they cost a lot more than consoles of the era.

When I was in middle/high school in the mid-late 90s, I was addicted to the precursors of today MMORPGs (back when everything was text-based), and my career plan consisted of founding a gaming company. My mother successfully (for a time) dissuaded me, saying "Who has time to play games? Once you have money to pay for games, you'll be working at a job for most of your waking hours." A couple years out of college, I ac…

I need to start gaming again.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#173

Post by art0rz » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

charrondev wrote: post #127

manigandham wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack does do syntax highlighting. Enter a code snippet and select the language.

Were finishing a HipChat migration to Slack in January. HipChat doesn’t even have inline code or any syntax highlighting so I’ll be very glad to make the transition.

HipChat is terrible. The only thing it has going for it is that it allows on-prem, where most alternatives do not.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#174

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:53 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #170

ineedasername wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago, a "game console" (home or portable) was mostly something upper-middle-class children owned No. Unless you're talking about a country other than the US, this is absolutely incorrect. Original Playstation sold more than 40,000,000 units in the U.S., and in the same console generation N64 sold another 20,000,000. On the portable front, the original Gameboy & Color version, beginning in 1989, sold more than…

> This is not out of reach for even poorer households. My point with that statement was more about the image than the reality. Go back to 2002, and ask a legislator—or any childless 40-year-old—"who plays video games." That's the answer they'd give. Yuppies. Children of yuppies. (Then the XBOX hit and it became "college-student yuppies and urban youth." No market shift happened in reality; it was just advertising cau…

What a member of the elite class of legislators knows about pop culture is an awful barometer, especially when you toss it in as better than actual counts of how many people owned these things. You sound like you're arguing from your own subjective circumstances instead of reasoning with evidence.

And maybe girls around you didn't play videogames, but they certainly did where I was, about as much, but maybe a little less. you're assumptions here are simply wrong.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#175

Post by Semaphor » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:00 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #140

gruez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they'll rebrand Lync^H^H^H^H Skype for Business to "Discord for Business"

Isn't that what they have now?

Yeah, MS teams which is like discord. Only worse and slow.

Teams is better than Skype or Lync, but that is a very, very low bar to clear.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#176

Post by throwawaymath » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

callalex wrote: post #167

dyarosla wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon bought Twitch for $1B I believe, not $2B. How accurate are the the other figures you cited? If possible, please do provide links for figures you cite- it’s incredibly useful.

The irony of complaining about a lack of sources without sourcing your own claim seems to be lost on you. Here, I did the work for you: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-buys-twitch-2014-8

There's no reason to be mean about it. You could have just politely provided the citation without the condescension. You made it personal.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#177

Post by derefr » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:26 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #174

derefr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not out of reach for even poorer households. My point with that statement was more about the image than the reality. Go back to 2002, and ask a legislator—or any childless 40-year-old—"who plays video games." That's the answer they'd give. Yuppies. Children of yuppies. (Then the XBOX hit and it became "college-student yuppies and urban youth." No market shift happened in reality; it was just advertising cau…

What a member of the elite class of legislators knows about pop culture is an awful barometer, especially when you toss it in as better than actual counts of how many people owned these things. You sound like you're arguing from your own subjective circumstances instead of reasoning with evidence. And maybe girls around you didn't play videogames, but they certainly did where I was, about as much, but maybe a little…

> What a member of the elite class of legislators knows about pop culture is an awful barometer

No it's not. "Pop culture" (or "mainstream"-ness) must reach even "a member of the elite class", to be pop culture. The point at which something becomes "pop culture", is precisely the point at which it becomes equally likely that you've heard of it, no matter which demographics you're a part of. If there's even one demographic (like busy rich old white men) that can still be completely isolated from a thing's "reach", then that thing is not pop culture yet.

If all 20-year-olds know about something, but all 40-year-olds do not know about that thing, then that thing is not "pop culture" (or "mainstream", either-or.)

On the other hand, if 10% of ten-year-old boys and eighty-year-old women and plumbers and astrophysicists and farmers and investment bankers have all heard of the thing, then it is "pop culture."

Try that criterion out. It really does work:

• Beanie Babies? Pop culture.

• Pogs? Not really pop culture. They were a fad, but they died out before they reached universal intelligibility.

• The movie Titanic? Pop culture.

• The movie The Matrix? Not quite pop culture. My grandma hasn't seen it. Yours probably hasn't either.

• Pokemon in general? Not pop culture.

• Pikachu in particular? Pop culture. (Thus the recent movie.)

• Snoopy? Pop culture. Americana, even. ("Americana" being a word meaning "pop culture, but pretty much only in America, so we've latched onto it as a thing that reminds us of America.")

• Hello Kitty? Pop culture elsewhere, but not-so-much in America, despite what certain stylists like to think.

It is by this same criteria that I claim that "video games up to 2003" were not—as an abstract gestalt—part of pop culture, and that "video games starting in 2004"—as an abstract gestalt—were part of pop culture. They went from being "Hello Kitty" to being "Snoopy"; from being "The Matrix" to being "Titanic"; from being "Pogs" to being "Beanie Babies."

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#178

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:32 AM UTC

ultrasaurus wrote: post #88

Doing the math out loud: Worth $1.65B April 19th, worth $1.85B December 19th (+$150MM in new money, for a post-money of $2B ignoring rounding, options pool expanding and preferences). So their value grew ~12% in 8 months.

When you look at broader market conditions, this is somewhat impressive. Picking a FAANG out of a hat, AMZN is down 12% in the same period. Granted, they're at different stages, but there have been some serious valuation headwinds in the past few months.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#179

Post by skrebbel » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:39 AM UTC

legionof7 wrote: post #139

I've used Discord for a long time and my previous startup was even part of the Hypesquad program. However, I'm really concerned with their views around E2E encryption. We've asked many times for an end-to-end encryption service. This became the #3 most upvoted request ( https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600... ). Unfortunately, their "rejection" and user comments were deleted after they switche…

It's extremely hard to get e2e right and still have great UX when your product revolves around semipublic group chats.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#180

Post by x220 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:51 AM UTC

buckysock wrote: post #149

nostrademons wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in middle/high school in the mid-late 90s, I was addicted to the precursors of today MMORPGs (back when everything was text-based), and my career plan consisted of founding a gaming company. My mother successfully (for a time) dissuaded me, saying "Who has time to play games? Once you have money to pay for games, you'll be working at a job for most of your waking hours." A couple years out of college, I ac…

Huxley : soma soma soma

How is it different when adults spend excess mental energy on video games instead of their career? Both are inherently meaningless and illusory.